MORE ACTIVITY

''Art Basel has brought so many things,'' Cano says. ``It's amazing that 25 festivals are going on here at the same time in December. But it isn't just that week. Now I have a steady flow of inquiries all year. I've been going to the Wynwood walks. There are throngs of young people looking at art. That wasn't happening a decade ago. And people are more educated; they are asking more questions. It's taken a long time to build, but it's a great feeling.''

Says Snitzer, one of Miami's most successful dealers: ``You see momentum as a result of Art Basel. And the smaller fairs have made art more accessible and more populist. It's less intimidating to walk up to a booth at a fair than go into a high-powered gallery. I think we're way ahead of where we were 10 years ago. But I don't want to let everyone off that easy. It's a real responsibility for this community to get more educated and support the arts. We have a handful of great collectors and institutions, but we're not New York, L.A., London or Paris. We don't compare.''

Gallerist Bernice Steinbaum won't give Basel all the credit for the growth that Miami has experienced in the past decade.

''The museums are doing an incredible job getting young movers and shakers out; the dealers are doing a great job having talks and events at their galleries,'' says Steinbaum, who moved her longtime business from New York to Miami in 2000. ''There was the book'' -- Miami Contemporary Artists -- ``that came out last year. All those things add up. I think, for most young collectors, Art Basel is actually daunting. You don't start buying at $100,000 or $500,000 or several million.''

In fact, even walking into a gallery like Snitzer's or Steinbaum's can be scary to an unseasoned art fan, which is where a group like MOCA Shakers, an auxiliary for young professionals who support North Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art, comes in.

Shakers meet for talks, openings and events that put them together with some of the biggest dealers, artists and collectors in town.

''If a Shaker sees a curator or a collector at a museum, or at Basel, they won't be intimidated to walk up to them and ask them a question,'' says MOCA Director Bonnie Clearwater. ``Being involved helps you get over your fear; that's the biggest thing.''

And by creating ''stimulated and committed'' younger art supporters, MOCA helps nurture the big patrons of the future, Clearwater says. ``We try to emphasize to all collectors, especially those collecting emerging artists, that you shouldn't look at art just as a commodity. You should look at it as investing in artists. By buying an artist's work, you are encouraging him to keep going and making it possible for a gallery to survive.''

`SOMETHING CLICKED'

Fernando Alvarez-Perez Jr., 20, whose father is a longtime collector, says Basel and Miami's thriving new art scene changed his life. He was just a party boy at college in Alabama when his father called him home to check out Basel and a few gallery shows.

''The focus of my life was getting drunk and stoned. But when I came home and went to see all that art, something clicked, and I found a reason to focus and succeed,'' says Alvarez-Perez, who is working on a degree in finance and international studies at the University of Miami. He says he'll go to law school and continue to expand his art collection, recently started -- a little bit with his dad's money, he admits.

''I recently got a small piece by Brian Burkhardt at Gallery Diet. An absolutely brilliant little nest,'' says Alvarez-Perez, who is trying to turn other young people on to art collecting through Students Advancing Miami's Contemporary Art (SAMCA), an organization he recently founded. SAMCA gives young art fans VIP access to the art scene.

''It was Basel that drew me in,'' Alvarez-Perez says. ``It was spectacular; it was beautiful. But what keeps me in is the art itself. An artwork can mean something to you one day, and the next day it means something different. But it always means something.''

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